


counting clouds

by infinitebees



Series: the angel's share [2]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen, this is an asra and nadia love account
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 10:44:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12629274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinitebees/pseuds/infinitebees
Summary: “What’s that one?” Asra asks, pointing up at an improbably fluffy cloud as it floats across the sky. Nadia follows it with her eyes and thinks that this game is positively infantile.“It’s what’s in your head,” she says dryly.





	counting clouds

“What’s that one?” Asra asks, pointing up at an improbably fluffy cloud as it floats across the sky. Nadia follows it with her eyes and thinks that this game is positively infantile.

“It’s what’s in your head,” she says dryly. (Actually, though, it does rather resemble his hair. On more than one occasion Nadia has fancied that if she were to reach for his head – for him at all, really – he’d dissipate beneath her touch. Or maybe that’s just her projecting.

Asra, though, only laughs. “You could be right,” he admits. “But take it a little more seriously, Nadi! They want to be understood, just like we do.”

_Speak for yourself_ , Nadia thinks. Five years down the line and she still feels like a stranger to Vesuvia, to its people. She is inside its gates, inside its palace – but somehow she’s still the young woman who stood outside, anxious to enter, anxious not to let it show. Now she wants only to be as unknowable as they’ve made her out to be.

“Do you tell that to your friend?” she asks, rather than voice any of what’s in her head. She’s rewarded by the way Asra startles beside her. Before he can respond, though, there’s a voice from above them. Lucio, indignant and looking significantly worse for wear these days, eclipses their view of the sky as he taps his foot impatiently into the grass.

“We’re supposed to be meeting with Consul Valerius, and I find you lazing around like this?” And hell, there’s that sneer she can’t stand. On more than one occasion she’s wondered what it would be like simply to wipe it off his face as one would frosting from a cake. It’s strange – the memory of her wedding is more like a passing thought than a real memory, but she has a mental catalog of every time he’s made that face at her. As though he were disappointed by who she turned out to be. _Get in line, your grace._

But she only smiles beatifically at him, and waves as if to shoo him away. “He’ll get over it, my dear.”

“He really won’t. Come now, my day’s been wretched enough.”

The sudden burst of laughter that escapes from somewhere in her chest surprises everyone, but her most of all. As does the fact that rather than acquiesce, she merely says, “Well, fuck it. You’ll live.” A pause. “Well, or that’s the hope.” Asra’s laughter at that bolsters here, and she feels a sudden rush at having said what she feels for once. 

Lucio huffs and mutters, “At this rate I doubt it,” and there’s a pointed look at Asra, dozing peacefully on the grass, that the two of them pretend not to notice. When he leaves they drift off into their own little world again, the one that Asra seems to carry around with him. The birds that usually annoy her to hear in the morning now inspire a sort of joy in her that must be something like freedom, and the sun on her face feels almost as good as it did in Prakra.

“Did you give it anymore thought?” Asra asks with a sidelong glance.

“I think it’s a cloud, Asra.”


End file.
